Eclipse4/RCP/Modeled UI/Model Elements

Contents

Overview

The Eclipse 4 model is made up of a number of interfaces. All of these interfaces begin with the letter 'M' and expose a number of getter and setter methods. The model is built up of a number of abstract interfaces that are extended by a set of concrete interfaces.

The Eclipse 4 model was derived from the best practices that evolved from previous versions of the Eclipse application platform. The modelled UI has fundamental representations of windows, perspectives, stacks or tiles, and parts. It adopts the command/handler/bindings model introduced in Eclipse 3.4.

Abstract Elements

The abstract interfaces provides generic attributes that are expected to be needed by many different model elements.

MApplicationElement

MContribution

MUIElement

MUILabel

Containers

Many of the E4AP model elements are actually containers of other elements, indicated by implementing MElementContainer or one of its subinterfaces. A container has a set of children, and a selected element. The selected element may be null. For many containers, the selected element indicates the element with focus.

MElementContainer: the generic top-level container

MGenericStack: generally represents a container that shows or highlights only one of many elements

MGenericTile: generally represents a container that shows all of its children